Travel Safe – Keep hold of your belongings

How to Travel Safely:

I hope everyone who travels does have at least basic travel insurance cover. For me it is a travel essential, as much as anything because I don’t want to have to work out whether the country I am visiting has reciprocal health cover or not. But, I must admit I take out my travel insurance more to protect me in case of a health problem or major travel issues than to cover the things which I travel with.

In my personal experience, most of the problems connected with losing clothes, credit cards, mobile phones, cameras and money are to do with inconvenience. If you lose you purse or your suitcase it can ruin your holiday if you end up without the money to do the things you’ve planned and personally unless I happen to be in Paris or Milan I’d really rather not spend my vacation clothes shopping. I have a few tricks to help me keep on the road if everything goes pear-shaped.

When I’m flying and checking in luggage, I carry my laptop and my camera in hand luggage. That way, I hope that I will arrive at the other end with them both.

I also pack a clean top and change of underwear in my hand luggage so that if checked in luggage does go astray I can at least wear something clean and fresh.

If possible I travel with hand luggage only on the outbound journey. I take a hold-all that folds away so that if I DO end up shopping for wine, oil or other goods that need to go in the hold, I can check luggage in for my return journey

I also pack my phone and camera chargers into my hand luggage. There’s nothing worse than getting delayed at the airport and finding that you can’t make a phone call because your phone is flat.

Before leaving I call my bank to warn them I will be overseas.

I take an EHIC card with me if I am travelling within the European Union. They are free to apply for and should ensure that you don’t have to pay for healthcare if you need it!

I check with my mobile phone company and make suitable arrangements to pay for calls and internet access. On the one occasion I didn’t do that, I managed to rack up a £50 bill in just 2 hours by downloading my mail!

I make sure I have enough funds in my current account to cover anything I want to buy when I am overseas. Many Bank Current Accounts are the most cost effective way to pay in local currency, because you only convert the money that you need for each transaction. Do check first though, whether your current account

I generally carry some cash both in pounds sterling and in the local currency, a debit card and one credit card in my hand luggage. I generally don’t take travellers cheques any more, but that is partly based on where I am travelling to.

Once I reach my destination, if there’s a safe in the room I put the credit card and most of the cash in the safe, taking with me just enough for the day and carrying my debit card with me.

If I really don’t need cash or my phone with me, I don’t carry them. After all, what use is a mobile phone or 50 euros when you are half way up a mountain with a group of local walkers.

Then there are the things I keep meaning to get round to doing.

I don’t have a preloaded currency card. I have an idea it might be a good way to travel, but I’ve never quite been organised enough.

I haven’t set the phone and laptop track and disable apps up. I know I should. In fact while I’ve been writing this post I’ve discovered that the solution for my phone in particular is already there. I just need to go here https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager and set it up properly!

I don’t use a money belt. I probably would do if I thought I was travelling anywhere risky. I excuse myself by carrying a handbag with a proper closure and a shoulder strap that I can wear across my body…but I do know it’s not the same and there are better ways to travel safe.

I’m going to Cork tomorrow – and off now to check my mobile and set up my device manager properly!

How do you keep your possessions safe when you are travelling?

Disclaimer: This post was sponsored by TSB Bank, but all views are my own.

I carry everything that I couldn’t bare to loose in my hand luggage, which often makes it quite heavy! I like being safe in the knowledge that loosing my checked bag wouldn’t ruin my holiday (not that I’ve had one in 8 years, so they may have more strict weight/size restrictions now!). I’m glad banks are being a bit more proactive about telling them when you’re going away too – we were fine for years and then got caught out when this was newly bought in – we went a whole weekend away with only one (supposed to be back up) debit card that would work so that we could withdrawn a little cash (which we tended to do because the direct VISA exchange rate was always much higher than the cash-to-cash rates back home and abroad).

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